Apple Final Cut Express HD - Manual (Page 180)

180 Part IV Capturing and Importing
Choosing a Filenaming Scheme
Before you start capturing clips, think about the filenaming scheme you want to use for
your project. It’s easier to edit when you have an organized naming system, especially if
there are several people working on a project at one time. This will help you avoid
duplicate clip names.
Using descriptive names makes organizing and editing your footage a lot easier.
However, very detailed names can cause trouble too. For example, Final Cut Express HD
can handle long clip names, but other systems often can’t. Also, certain punctuation
and special characters, such as slash (/) and colon (:) are illegal in Mac OS X. Try to aim
for filenames consisting of fewer than 31 characters that only use alphanumeric (A–Z,
0–9) characters. For more information, see “
Filenaming Considerations ” on page 49.
Determining How Much Disk Space You Need
Before you begin capturing, it’s a good idea to make sure you have enough disk space
on your computer. The amount of disk space you need depends on the quality at
which you capture your video and the length of your finished projects. Use the table
below to estimate how much space you need.
In addition to space for media files, you need extra space for render files, graphics files,
and so on. A rule of thumb to determine how much space you need is to multiply the
amount of space needed for your finished program by five.
For example, if you want to create a music video that’s approximately four minutes
long using DV video:
 3.6 MB/sec. video data rate x 60 seconds = 216 MB/min. x 4 minutes = 864 MB
needed for project files.
 864 MB x 5 = 4320 MB needed for project, render, cache, and other files.
DV data transfer rate 30 sec. 1 min. 5 min. 10 min. 30 min. 60 min.
3.6 MB/sec.,
DV-format video 108 MB 216 MB 1.08 GB 2.16 GB 6.5 GB 13 GB
Apple Intermediate Codec 1
HDV 720p30
210 MB 420 MB 2.05 GB 4.10 GB 12.30 GB 24.61 GB
Apple Intermediate Codec 1
HDV 1080i50 1
360 MB 720 MB 3.52 GB 7.03 GB 21.11 GB 42.19 GB
Apple Intermediate Codec 1
HDV 1080i60
420 MB 840 MB 4.10 GB 8.20 GB 24.61 GB 49.22 GB
1 Data rates for the Apple Intermediate Codec are variable; these figures are approximate and may vary according to
the complexity of your footage. Images with a lot of detail have a higher data rate, while images with less detail
have a lower data rate.